What about the other side in that embarrassing battle? The school board that played the same political games as Gary, (e.g., unnecessarily shutting down popular programs to generate public pressure) is still in office and receiving huge increases in taxpayer funding, with no apparent increase in accountability.

If we had had an elected school board last time around, voters would almost certainly have turned out the current board en masse along with Gary. Instead, that board is still in power and happily directing record spending.

Certainly a body that has so much influence on most of our lives, and receives such a huge percentage of our tax dollars, should be directly accountable to us via the ballot box. A proposal to implement such a system is being considered now, in this legislative session!

But we must remember that electing a quality school board will take vigilance. The radical right is already organizing and plans to run a full slate of candidates. They will not be identifying themselves as part of any organization or party, but will share an agenda: getting tax dollars funneled to their private, religious schools. Their rhetoric will include attacks on public education in general, followed by support for school vouchers and direct aid in the form of computers and textbooks. Watch for discussion of such "issues" as school prayer or posting the ten commandments, and attacks on multi-cultural education.

And we'll need some decent candidates to run against the radical right slate -- community people who we know and trust, whose sole agenda is the maintenance of top quality public education in Anne Arundel County.

Anyone?